


A Place to Belong

by nothingeverlost



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 23:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingeverlost/pseuds/nothingeverlost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stranger, tea, and a letter in green ink</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place to Belong

**Author's Note:**

> Because it occurred to me that Henry was ten last year. And he’s eleven this fall. And you know what happens when you turn eleven…

There’s a strange man sitting at the dining room table. Not just a stranger (and those didn’t come to Storybrooke, not even with the curse broken) but someone strange. And yet Mary Margaret - Snow - her mother - is sitting calmly across from him, pouring tea.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess Merlin?” Emma slides out of her jacket, taking a cautious step closer. She’s just gotten through breaking up a fight between four men, three who used to be pigs and one a wolf, slinging straw and mortar at each other. Maybe at some point these things will get easier to deal with. Today’s probably not that day.

“I’m going to go get another teacup. Emma, this is Professor Dumbledore and he’s come to talk to you about Henry.” Snow slips away to the kitchen, which in this new house actually means a different room and the illusion of privacy.

”A professor of what, exactly?” She doesn’t like that this person is here about Henry. Her kid’s been though enough without strangers knowing about him. With everything changing she’s doing her best to keep things normal for him; that means normal teachers in the fall, even if ‘normal’ last year meant his grandma. The one concession she’s made to lessons during the summer is letting David - James - her father - teach Henry some sword fighting. Wooden swords only, and just because her father and son had looked at her with expressions too weirdly the same.

“Many things and nothing at all, Emma. I’m the headmaster at a very special school.” There’s something about his voice, more than the British accent. Something that made it impossible not to listen even though she was sure she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

“Henry has a school.”

“I’m sure it’s a very fine muggle school. But young Mr. Mills is, as you know, far more than an ordinary child.” He offers her a piece of paper, the parchment slightly rough against her fingers and the writing a strange green script not dissimilar from the way Mr. Gold writes. Emma reads the letter twice before looking up at him.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“You yourself should have received the same invitation on your eleventh birthday, Miss Swan, but something prevented your being found.”

“The curse.” Snow returns, standing in the doorway, the same sad expression on her face that seemed to be there so often when no one was watching. Emma, who chose to miss out on the first ten years of her son’s life, can only guess at the pain of this woman who she still finds hard to think of as her mother, who was forced to miss twenty-eight years.

“She would have had a place to belong.” Snow sits heavily in her chair, tea cup grasped in her hand so tightly that Emma was afraid it might shatter.

“Things happen as they must, sometimes.” For a moment the stranger - the wizard, if he was to be believed - and Snow stare at each other as if nothing else existed. They almost seemed as if they were talking, though there was no sound or movement of lips. it was Snow that broke the moment, looking down to poor the tea. Emma looks to both of them, her lips pressed together.

“Henry has a place to belong. I’m not sending him to some other country to go to school.” Not when she’d only just gotten him. He was hers to protect. And love. It had taken losing him to realize how fierce her love for the boy was, but now that she knew she didn’t let a day go by without telling him. Her son, in his own way as alone as she had been, absorbed every touch and ‘I love you’ like a sponge.

“I’m not asking you to make the choice right now, Emma. Just to think about it.” The man looks at her for a moment, his eyes seeming to bore into hers and read her thoughts. And then he blinks, and smiles, and seems more like a man who plays Santa during the holidays than anything else. ”Would you mind passing the chocolate biscuits, please? Cookies, I mean. One must remember the local customs, after all.”

“Yeah. Right.” Emma passes him the plate after taking one for herself. On second thought she takes two; this has been a strange day.


End file.
